oil on card 30x20cm
The main source for this little sky piece is a photo I took last summer, from the National Museum of Scotland roof terrace looking towards Calton Hill. The scene depicted doesn't actually exist, as the foreground and the trees are in Perthshire, and were photoshopped in as part of the composition process. I took the liberty of removing the celebrated buildings and tower from this well-known landmark, and replaced all traces of Edinburgh below the hill with tree texture. I think that does two things; it makes the landscape anonymous, and pushes the viewer towards the sky – which is the real subject of the piece anyway.
My interest was in the contrast between the darker cloudlets against a light background, and lighter cloudlets against the dark background. There's also an interesting play on cool blues and warmer greys, and cool neutral and warmer creamy whites.
I'm quite pleased with the landscape though, and as usual, that was the bit that painted itself with very little thought from me. The source was a summer photo, but I coloured the monochrome layer with a lazy, ill-considered browny-yellow mix, which – unexpectedly - looked very good, so I changed the season to a dark and wintry autumn, and let the painting lead me in developing that fiction.
I was also pleasantly surprised by how well the band of thin glaze (Burnt Umber/Ultramarine) between the horizon and the lower edge of the near cumulus layer worked. It's kept its warmth where it shows through the overlaid blue-grey glaze, and describes the distance between the cloud banks quite well – it's a good use of transparent pigments in thin glazes.
My working method seems to have settled - for the present anyway - into placing and positioning the picture elements lightly in pencil, developing form and tone with some monochrome 'flow' acrylic underdrawing, then applying oil paint layers in degrees of opacity and transparency. This was my first outing with Schminke's new 'Flake White Hue' - mentioned a couple of posts ago, and the sole white used here. It's a good 'Fake Flake', not bad at all actually, though I have yet to use it as thickly as I used to in the olden days. It dries at about the same rate as genuine Lead Flake White - and that's great - but I do wish Schminke had ground it in Linseed Oil, not Safflower, as it has a slightly greasy – as opposed to creamy - feel to it. Someday perhaps, a manufacturer will produce the perfect Lead White Alternative...
Summing up, this isn't a bad little piece, and fairly efficiently painted. Here's hoping the rest of the year's work goes as well as this one did...
